American democracy appears to be in jeopardy. Irrespective of the political dispensation at the White House, the policy of promoting proxy wars and covert military operations across the globe continues to mutate.

Any nation that decides to exercise its sovereign right to protect its citizens from armed insurgents incurs Washington’s wrath. America wants to permanently amend the rules of the game by stating that a nation’s right to protect is subordinate to the international community’s responsibility to Protect (R2P). Syria is the latest in the long list of nations that is suffering to sustain American imperialism.

R2P is the new name for humanitarian intervention, a norm adopted by the UNO in 2005. According to Gareth Evans, R2P equips everyone in the international community to prevent the “catastrophic human rights violations taking place behind sovereign state walls,” with “coercive military action as a last resort, not a first.”

The problem with analysts like Gareth is that their vision permits them to peep through the walls of sovereignty but not through the iron curtain of the empire that adheres to the doctrine of Instigate to Intervene (I2I). It is through use of such dubious norms and instigations that America attacked Libya and is now in the process of destabilizing Syria. Russia, China and Iran are the three countries preventing the Western military juggernaut to roll over Syria completely.

In an open defiance of well established international practices, Washington is blatantly using Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE to lead an armed insurgency inside Syria. As a result the three-year-old dissent in Damascus is now an international problem. The Western media, with an agenda to flare up the situation in Syria began beaming in the misdemeanors of Bashar Al-Assad and his dynastic rule; projecting the opposition as victims of political atrocity.

Political struggle is a part and parcel of any state. The problem begins when political fissures are exploited by external actors. This is exactly what has happened in Syria where the government’s legitimate actions against the opposition-armed militancy are being dubbed as human rights violations.

The branding of Assad as a tyrant is a ruse to plunge the nation into a war of attrition. Since the beginning of January 2012, the C-130 transport aircraft loaded with weapons have been regularly taking off at the American military base in Qatar to land at Turkish airports. From the airports, the arms consignments travel by road to rebel-military camps on the Syria-Turkey border.

The NATO’s encouragement to Syrian rebels is not limited to moral and material support; the NATO countries are also in the forefront to mobilize manpower to augment the foot soldiers of the Free Syria Army (composed of Syrian military officers who have defected from their parent outfit, a bunch of mercenaries and Al-Qaeda terrorists). According to a study by King’s college London, “Hundreds of Europeans have travelled to Syria since the start of the civil war to fight against the country’s President, Bashar al-Assad…600 individuals from 14 countries including the UK, Austria, Spain, Sweden and Germany had taken part in the conflict since it began in 2011. European fighters made up to between 7% and 11% of the foreign contingent in Syria, which ranged between 2,000 and 5,500 people.”

America has anointed the main opposition party, Syrian National Coalition (SNC) to occupy the official Syrian seat at the Arab League. It is perhaps for this reason that Moaz al-Khatib the former leader of SNC, admitted, “We thank all the governments who supported us, but the role to be played by the United States is much bigger.” To democratize the instigation to intervene, and retain American control, the US has appointed Ghassan Hitto, an IT professional from Dallas, US, as the head of the planned interim government.

The imperial American obduracy flows from the ideological belief that the nation-states’ ‘monopoly over organized violence’ is not a right that can be exercised without the approval of the empire. Thereby meaning that the states are authorized to use violence within their own territory, only to protect those people certified as victims by the empire. Any violence against the American certified victims is branded as human rights violations and genocide.

The Western fetish for R2P and their so-called ‘good intentions’ have already caused mayhem in the lives of ordinary Iraqi or Libyan. The Russian President Putin says,

However, the Americans will not abandon R2P because it is a tool to re-order the states in accordance with what Stephen Gill has identified as “new constitutionalism – imposition of new constitutional and quasi-constitutional political and legal frameworks – with respect to the state and the operation of strategic, macroeconomic, microeconomic and social policy.”

70 years ago, during the WWII, when Japan bombed Madras and Cylone, the ethnic divide between the Tamils and Sinhalese was hardly pronounced. Both were victims of great power politics that was being played out in the region.

In the 1980s the hegemonic politics once again attacked the region. This time, instead of jointly facing the imperial wrath, the Tamils and Sinhalese were victimizing each other on behalf of a new empire in global politics.

The trans-Atlantic alliance opened the flood gates of money and arms for Sri Lankan Tamils and their terrorist organization LTTE to give the world the gift of suicide bombing and 20th century’s first terrorist navy.

Like in so many third world civil-wars, America and the West played a dubious role in Sri Lanka too. They first ignited the war – let it simmer – granted a sudden victory to Sri Lanka after 26 years and finally vanquished the victors by making them slit each other’s throat.

In this entire game, America had all protagonists playing for them. Both General Fonseka, the Sri Lankan chief of army staff during the war and his boss secretary of defense Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, were US green card holder and US citizen respectively.

Fonseka was and continues to be a US green card holder and enjoys the status of a resident alien. His two daughters reside in US with moveable and immovable assets. Being in the army, the general must have acquired the card surreptitiously. Forget being a card holder of a foreign country – or having a foreign spouse – most militaries even debar their serving men from officially interacting with foreigners without proper permission. Needless to say, the General agreed to compromise his office to swap for a green card with the CIA.

Gotabhaya, after quitting the army as Lt Col had become a US citizen in 1990 under the Sri Lankan dual citizenship scheme that began in 1988 and was suspended on January 28, 2011. However, it is intriguing as to how a US citizen can be the defence secretary of a sovereign nation situated miles away from the US.

With all the key players in their pocket it was easy for the US to halt the civil-war at the time of their choosing and also plan the post war care of its stooges.

After a big lull, in 2008, a full-scale war broke out in the Sri Lanka’s north., the most dreaded LTTE tiger, Velupillai Prabhakaran,who had been sustaining the war for more than two decades,unexpectedly got eliminated without offering much resistance.

It would be naïve to imagine that the Chinese arms and some tacit support from India delivered the victory for Sri Lanka. The LTTE’s defeat was possible because America and Europe stopped supporting Tamil terror. The question is why did they suddenly end the war?

The LTTE leader and his brand of terrorism had become redundant in the era of pink revolutions. With the LTTE gone, the US needed some leverage in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan trio (Rajapaksa brothers and Fonseka) is no different from Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990.

After committing all the crimes against his own people, Pinochet the foot soldier of American capitalism, went on to stay at his masters den at London. Probably, if the Sri Lankan leaders have some more role to play for their American mentors, they will continue to be in Sri Lanka, else they will be shifted to the US and undergo some sham trial.

Strategically, the ruse of human rights offers much better options for America to intervene in Sri Lankan affairs. Beating the human rights drums helps the US keep the two main political actors, Fonseka and Rajapksa, ostensibly in opposition.

Sri Lanka has been cleaned up to offer itself as training ground for American led naval forces in the region. During the 1950s up to about 1962, Trincomalee in Sri Lanka was the hub of joint naval exercise, where the navies of United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Pakistan, India, and Canada used to meet annually. Strategically, the US wants to use Sri Lanka as its biggest naval base in the Indian Ocean region and prevent China from acquiring any sea space in south Sri Lanka.

Lastly, by challenging Colombo’s human rights record, the West and the rest have once again attacked the international order. They have reiterated that the US Empire governs the use of force on planet earth; sovereign nation’s monopoly over violence within their own territory is not absolute.

In mid April, when the English protesters were celebrating the death of Margret Thatcher, singing, “Ding Dong! The Wicked Witch is Dead” – the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was in Beijing, humming, ‘Pyongyang, Pyongyang! Kim Jong Un’ is damned’ – discussing with the top Chinese leadership ways to halt North Korea’s nuclear march.

Diplomatic negotiations have been stepped up to lower nuclear tensions on the Korean peninsula. The U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns is visiting China from April 24 to 25, and Beijing’s special envoy to North Korea is marking his presence in Washington this week.

The South Korean foreign minister is also in China to offer his formula for peace in the peninsula. Alongside, the initiatives to maintain peace, the preparations for war are also in full swing. The United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey is stopping over at Seoul and Beijing to discuss Pyongyang’s military posturing with his counterparts in both the capitals.

For people born in the 21st century or towards the end of 20th century this flurry of diplomatic activity may give the impression that war is imminent. But for those tracking the developments in the Korean region it’s nothing but some déjà vu.

The entire drama of demonizing North Korea started immediately after the fall of Soviet Union in early 1990. Much before the world started believing in the American propaganda about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions; North Korea had already been branded as an evil nuclear power by the publicity gurus in Bush administration.

In 1992, the IAEA started inspecting North Korean nuclear installations with a fine tooth comb. In 1993, “the CIA and three other intelligence agencies gave their assessment in a secret report leaked to the New York Times warning President Bill Clinton that North Korea probably has one or two nuclear bombs” (Guardian).

Twenty years later, the Economist tells us that North Korea’s “warning of “thermonuclear war” rings hollow because it has no hydrogen bombs.” North Korea too has added to the confusion by hopping in and out of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and brandishing it’s nukes-in-being.

Both North Korea and America are refusing to let go the nuclear card, the Economist as usual, leads the Western media-army of scaremongers and suggests that the North Korean nuclear weapons are no longer political tools used “as bargaining chips” but as military weapons that may reach the American shores one day.

Apart from nukes, the Western media has some basic problems with the North Korean way of life and their nationalism. Americans consider North Korean to be robots, completely devoid of the ability to think or question – “just a mass of quivering Kim Il Sung devotees”.

Most of the journalists find the absence of discontent in Pyongyang hard to understand. These questions are not as intriguing as they appear to be. If American liberals can continue to bear the burden of crony capitalism without revolting against the glaring inequalities in their society, then how does one expect the poor North Korean to raise the banner of protest against their dynastic ruler?

If the politically aware citizens of world’s most vibrant democracy can do nothing about the more than 900 US overseas military bases, then isn’t it foolhardy to expect people living under an authoritarian rule to question the military spending of their nation?

The American think tanks need to ponder over the question of vacating the Asia Pacific region and reconciling to the fact that nobody wants a war in their backyard. They need to ask as to why their government hell-bent on aggravating tensions in the region?

Unlike the American military that is continuously engaged in some or the other conflict across the globe, the North Korea army has been living peacefully, contended with training and testing its systems on home ground. China is not interested in seeing war coming to its doorstep. Beijing does not want North Korea to disappear as a buffer between Western forces and the Chinese PLA. South Korea would not like its sporty ‘Gangnam style’ to be replaced by martial music. According to South Korean Finance Minister Hyun Oh Seok, who seems to be tired of the war rhetoric, “Compared to the North Korea risk, a sliding yen is having a considerable impact on the real economy of South Korea… Depreciation of the yen has caused the spillover-effect phenomenon so this is worth discussing.”

It is to be appreciated that sovereignty and independence is more important to the North Korean leadership than their nuclear weapons. It is perhaps for this reason that North Korea has demanded, “ If the United States and the puppet South have the slightest desire to avoid the sledge-hammer blow of our army and the people, and truly wish dialogue and negotiations, they must make the resolute decision…The de-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula can begin with the removal of the nuclear war tools dragged in by the US and it can lead to global nuclear disarmament.”

Nobody, in his right frame of mind would like to see massive destruction due to a nuclear war. The 1950s Korean War resulted in a loss of 54,246 American and 1.26 million Korean lives. Would America provoke another war in the region to preserve its hegemony? Or to recover USS Pueblo, an American navy vessel that was captured by North Korean Navy on 23 January 1968, just a week prior to the commencement of Tet Offensive in Vietnam?

Published in ViewPointonline

It is important for the people of Asia to understand the true nature of the anti-Asia lobby in the West that is constantly pitching one nation against the otherToday, once again, the top most email in my inbox had an anti-China article - reminding me to take my daily dose of detest-China medicine. The latest from the Economist stable “Can India become a great power,” pokes India to be a man and “pursue an active security policy.”[1]
Teasingly, the article gives China second position in the class while India gets, ‘can do better’ remark on itsreport card. The reason for India’s ‘fair’ performance is that “66 years after the British left, it still clings to the post-independence creeds of semi-pacifism and “non-alignment”: the West is not to be trusted.”
Such conservative, hawkish literature - cut in the West is dutifully pasted on Indian thoughts. Its purpose is to inundate India with anti-China venom and besiege sensibilities that desire to see India prosper without the encumbrance of war.
An India-China relationship that is devoid of fear is unpalatable to the intellectual insurgents of the Luce-kind. The ‘Luce-ist’ insurgents penetrate mindsthrough myriad conservative and liberal think tanks and media houses. They use their pens and publications to push another war down our throats, much in the same fashion as they had in 1962.
Henry R Luce was the post war American media Mughal, the owner of Time, Life, Fortune, and the March of Time film and radio documentaries. This was at a time when “freedom of the press belonged to the man who owned one.” Luce used this power of the press in the most blatant fashion both in China and India. Luce was a publisher guided by missionary zeal. He wanted to see China as a Christian nation, gravitating naturally to perform its role as an American policeman in Asia Pacific.
Mao’s victory in 1949 put paid to Luce’s grand strategy. Luce refused to give up. He along with Alfred Kohlberg, a wealthy New York businessman continued to spearhead the ‘China Lobby’ that was fanatically anti-communist and pro-Chiang-Kai-shek. The Lobby’s aim was to guide Truman’s China policy and ensure that Indian military and political class was incorporated in the scheme designed to overthrow the Communist Party of China.
It was easy for Luce power to work in India because the Indian elite was fluent in English and more importantly a willing warrior in anti-communist crusades. Rajagopalachari, independent India’s first Governor General had openly declared, “I am here to save my country from the traps and dangers of the communist party. That is my policy from A to Z." Incidentally, Rajagopalachari’s political outfit, Swatantra party was in the forefront to demand war with China. Palpably, Luce’s Life magazine supported such ventures and wrote in its editorial in 1962, “TheSwatantra program could really get that huge country moving in a direction favorable to free institutions. The free world can wish this little party a big future.”
At the end of 1962 war the Time magazine gleefully commented, “The current slogan is a revision of the earlier cry for brotherhood with China: "Americans bhaibhai; Chinihaihai" (Americans are our brothers; death to the Chinese!).[2]
The ‘Luce-ists’ are now at work creating stories that sell the need for the Indian Navy to operate in the South China Sea. In August 2011, the Financial Times London was the first to report that the Indian Navy Ship INS Airavat had been challenged by a Chinese navy vessel in South China Sea Area.[3]
That this story was denied by the Indian navy spokesperson, failed to impress the editorial staff in Wall Street Journal that continued to suggest “India is being pulled into a complex and increasingly tense territorial dispute in the South China Sea.”
The media is unduly perturbed about the oil exploration possibilities in South China Sea on behalf of Vietnam. Similar zeal to report is missing when it comes to oil exploration in other disputed sites. According to media reports, ONGC Videsh (OVL) has also been negotiating to acquire 25% stakes in oil blocks from the Falkland Oil and Gas Ltd, off the disputed Falkland Island generally remains hidden in some remote corner of the media.. Exploring oil in Falkland may impact ONGC’s existing business interests in Cuba, Brazil and Venezuela is also never discussed. In Venezuela alone the total Indian investment is about $3 billion with the production from all fields expected to cross 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) by 2016. Do such huge investments not demand that the Indian navy develop capabilities for sustained operation Latin America, right under the British and American noses?
Instead, the ‘Luce’ press urges me to celebrate the 1962 war defeat, because they can’t ‘see’ young Indians befriending the Chinese. In the age of all pervasive media, the “Luce power” is even more lethal than what it was when Henry Robinson Luce exercised it in the 1950s.
It is important for the people of Asia to understand the true nature of the anti-Asia lobby in the West that is constantly pitching one nation against the other. If Asia is to prosper, uninterrupted peace in the region is paramount. It is also for Japan to realize that the United States is not Chicken pox that attacks only once in a human’s life time.Notes:
[1] ECONOMIST, http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21574511-indias-lack-strategic-culture-hobbles-its-ambition-be-force-world-can-india
[2] India: Never Again the Same, Time, November. 30, 1962
[3]( http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/883003ec-d3f6-11e0-b7eb-00144feab49a.html#ixzz2LL0Li61Q)

Monday, April 15, 2013

April ushers in spring and happiness. It is the ides of March that remind one of tragedy. But in American annals, April is a mixed bag month.

On Monday 16 April 2013, the twin explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon killed three innocent people and injured hundreds. Like all such acts of cowardice across the globe, this one too needs to be condemned for its shamelessness and sadism.

Unfortunately, America registered another big tragedy in its history. According to Slate Magazine, This week of April is associated with many other “unhappy anniversaries: the Oklahoma City Bombing (April 19, 1995), the Waco assault (April 19, 1993), the Columbine School Shooting (April 20, 1999), and the Virginia Tech massacre (April 16, 2007), for starters. Two of those tragedies—the Virginia Tech massacre and the Waco assault—were on Monday, the Patriot's Day of those years. “

The Marathon Monday in Boston was a holiday because of its association with Patriot’s day. Patriots' Day is not a public holiday in other parts of the United States. “If Patriots' Day and Tax Day fall on the same date, the deadline for filing an income tax return is extended for the residents of some states.”

According various media sources, “Patriot's Day commemorates the battles of Lexington and Concord near Boston, Massachusetts, which were fought near Boston in 1775. Patriot's Day is annually held on the third Monday of April because these battles of American war of independence were fought on April 19, 1775.

This Patriot’s day is altogether different from “the Patriot Day, held on September 11 to mark the anniversary of terrorist attacks in the USA in 2001.”

Besides, Patriot’s day another coincidence, according to Dick Eastman, is that the Boston blasts occurred on the same day when the national defence drills pertaining to similar bomb blast scenarios was underway in America. Incidentally, at the time of 9-11, Madrid, and the 7/7 bombings too such drills were being rehearsed.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

I can see the first few droplets of the ensuing general elections on my TV screen. The main political parties are lining up to impress the industrialists to garner money support. Once the election begins to pour cats and dogs, the fat cats dive deep and the cattle class comes into prominence.

Narendra Modi, BJP Prime Ministerial hopeful, was the first to kick-start the season by making an attempt to seek the blessing of the 1% super rich elite through the Wharton Business School route. When Wharton did not succeed, Modi applied “economy of effort” principle to reach out to both the businessman and their budding confidants through one single speech. He chose, SRCC (Sri Ram College of Commerce) that prepares young talent to go out and serve the global financial elite. He did a repeat performance in At the India Today Conclave.

In order to avoid looking laggard, Rahul Gandhi, Congress’s reluctant heir apparent has also chosen to address the annual general meeting of lobby group Confederation of Indian Industry on 4th April 2013.

The very idea of Narendra Modi as a leader of Indian democracy is reprehensible. By admitting Modi and his criminal coterie into its parliamentary committee, the BJP has rubbed salt into Guajarati Muslim’s wounds. The same BJP that finds it difficult to utter the word ‘pardon’ when it comes to Sanjay Dutt’s crime has no compunctions in condoning Modi who himself claims to be sleeping on his watch while thousands of Muslims were being lynched and burnt alive in Gujarat.

BJP’s open display of selective mourning- obliterating Muslim misery from the nation’s collective consciousness and pasting masochist Modi’s image instead, is fraught with grave dangers for India’s well being.

Those who support Modi are saying it loud and clear that the death of an India Muslim just doesn’t matter. This regressive agenda is pushing our social relations back towards the same old “paranoid-schizoid position - the struggle to eat or be eaten”. It is under such a state that divisive figures like Jinnahs’ begin to take shape and nations enter a state of civil-war.

Modi may have managed riot-evidence in his home state and in the Apex court, but he knows that dealing with the Americans is difficult and that is his main fear. The international forces that are currently propping up Modi may pretend to overlook his weak spot, but they are quiet adept at exploiting it an opportune moment. So Modi as a Prime Minister will not only be weak but also pliable.

Modi and his opportunistic party are stuck in a time rap. To look modern, Modi projects the image of a development man - a leader who can build roads, canals and lay the internet cable. But aren’t these the job of an able manager?

Why do we need a tainted figure to perform these jobs for us? We have scores of professionals like E Sreedharan do give us the top class infrastructure and systems.

A leader inspires people to take positive steps towards progress. Sadly, Modi’s performance in this arena is dismally pathetic. The developed world is tired of capitalism and is looking for viable alternatives and Modi is busy giving us lessons in profit making and ‘entrepreneurship’.

Modi cannot talk inequality, because that is what he is being used to promote further. Modi has no transformative idea to present. All he can offer is fear of authority and that is exactly what the sixty odd Indian dollar billionaires are looking for in the leader that they need to anoint.

The top-most Indian elite have lost trust in Congress leadership to protect their properties, it is for this reason that Rahul too is attempting to appease the captains of Indian economy, and pleading before them not to abandon the Congress ship. For the Indian Bourgeois, both the Congress and the BJP with similar economic agenda, but slight variations in their emphasis on the ‘national’ and the ‘social’ are best suited to maintain the semblance of democracy.

It is for this reason that no alternative political thought is allowed to come up and the coroprate media makes sure that the Congress, BJP duo continue to maintain monopoly over “national popular collective will”.

Monday, April 1, 2013

70 years ago, during the WWII, when Japan bombed Madras and Cyclone, the ethnic divide between the Tamils and Sinhalese was hardly pronounced. Both were victims of great power politics that was being played out in the region.

In the 1980s the hegemonic politics once again attacked the region. This time, instead of jointly facing the imperial wrath, the Tamils and Sinhalese were victimizing each other on behalf of a new empire in global politics.

The trans-Atlantic alliance opened the flood gates of money and arms for Sri Lankan Tamils and their terrorist organization LTTE to give the world the gift of suicide bombing and 20th century’s first terrorist navy.

Like in so many third world civil-wars, America and the West played a dubious role in Sri Lanka too. They first ignited the war – let it simmer – granted a sudden victory to Sri Lanka after 26 years and finally vanquished the victors by making them slit each other’s throat.

In this entire game, America had all protagonists playing for them. Both General Fonseka, the Sri Lankan chief of army staff during the war and his boss secretary of defense Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, were US green card holder and US citizen respectively.

Fonseka was and continues to be a US green card holder and enjoys the status of a resident alien. His two daughters reside in US with movable and immovable assets. Being in the army, the general must have acquired the card surreptitiously. Forget being a card holder of a foreign country – or having a foreign spouse – most militaries even debar their serving men from officially interacting with foreigners without proper permission. Needless to say, the General agreed to compromise his office to swap for a green card with the CIA.